SOTU: A Coda

I hadn’t intended to say anything more about President Obama’s State of the Union speech, but this excellent post by the Blogprof reminded me of one of Obama’s most offensive pronouncements:

If we truly care about our deficit, we simply cannot afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

Those greedy “wealthiest 2 percent” must be fleecing the rest of us, right? Well, not exactly. Heck, forget the wealthiest two percent–the top one percent are pretty much pulling the wagon, as the Blogprof shows with this chart. The top one percent pay more income taxes than the bottom 95 percent. Click to enlarge:
We are rapidly reaching the point where a large majority of Americans are free riders. Whether democracy can survive under that condition is a wide-open question.